LIFT, London’s biennial festival of international theatre, has today announced the full programme for June 2018 and beyond. David Binder, recently announced as Artistic Director of Brooklyn Academy of Music, curates a festival which spans disciplines and fearlessly plays with form. Through exploring London’s local, national and international identity, LIFT opens doors to cultures from across the globe, celebrates shared humanity and challenges preconceptions.

One of the most exciting and urgent companies to feature in the festival are contemporary theatre company, Australia’s Back to Back Theatre. Driven by an ensemble of actors with perceived intellectual disabilities who are co-authors and performers of the work.

Lady Eats Apple is a large-scale, experiential production, featuring ingenious binaural sound and epic visuals, which exposes us to the fragility of existence while challenging the assumptions we hold about others and ourselves. The play is part of the Barbican’s 2018 Season, The Art of Change, which explores how artists respond to, reflect and can potentially effect change in the social and political landscape. The UK Premiere will be at the Barbican on 14th June running to the 16th June.

In a city whose beating heart is diversity and at a time that our plural society is under threat,
LIFT 2018 will celebrate community in all its forms. Those who are increasingly at risk of
marginalisation will be placed at the forefront; stories of displacement from the Congo;
revelations of a lost generation in the school-to-prison pipeline in the USA and migrant
workers in Qatar. Audiences will confront Dries Verhoeven’s societal fears in Phobiarama,
dance under the stars to effervescent afrobeats in SESSION and experience a collision of
theatre, contemporary music, opera and Korean pansori in contemporary musical Trojan
Women.

LIFT last burst across the city in June 2016, the month that saw the Brexit vote passed in the
UK and the beginnings of a startling shift in the social-political climate of our world. In the
two years that have followed, LIFT has commissioned and programmed works that speak to
these changes in a festival of contemporary, international art; a global offering of radically
open work to celebrate a multitude of diverse communities and all that unites us rather than
divides.

David Binder, Guest Artistic Director, said: “As a New Yorker I’ve always felt an affinity
with London but never more so than in the last two years. Both of these great cities have had
their identities challenged by their own countries and are fighting to remain, in all ways,
open. It seemed irrefutable that LIFT 2018 would be more urgent and necessary than ever
before in its 37 year history.

“We want to offer an antidote to the recent times, giving chances to celebrate our diverse
communities, dispel seeded fears and confront preconceptions. From the iconic buildings,
renowned stages and unusual, hidden spaces in which our festival takes place, we welcome
global citizens to create work as a signifier to everyone; whether you were born here, have
made it your home or are just passing through, you belong here.”